The Magic Speech Flower eBook

Because of A-bal-ka’s many enemies, he was very
watchful. He seldom went far from home, and when
he did venture to go abroad, he nearly always followed
the same path. At first it ran along under the
side of a fallen log. From the end of this, a
few quick leaps carried him to a brush pile.
A jump or two more brought him to a rock and yet a
few more to a stone fence. Once there, he felt
safe. At the least alarm, he could run into a
hole too small for any of his foes except, perhaps,
A-tos-sa, whom he dreaded more than any of the others.

All along the stone fence stood nut trees,—­oaks,
hazels, walnuts, beeches, and others. And at
one end was a cornfield.

This made it very handy for A-bal-ka. He could
gather the nuts which fell upon the stone fence, and
when he went for corn, he could keep to the fence
and thus avoid his enemies. Early in the fall
he began to fill his storehouse. To and fro he
went along the fence with his cheek-pouches full of
corn and nuts.

Little Luke often amused himself by watching him.
He would pick up the nuts with his paws and put them
into his cheek-pouches, and it was amazing how many
they would hold. When he started for home, his
cheeks sometimes looked as if he had a very severe
case of the mumps.

One day in the autumn little Luke found out a queer
thing about A-bal-ka. He was going up the trail
with Old John. A-bal-ka started to cross the
trail, but seeing the old Indian he became scared and
ran up a tree. This was a thing which he seldom
did; never unless he was obliged to, to escape from
his enemies. He is a ground squirrel, and no tree
climber, like his cousins the Red and the Gray Squirrels.

“Now,” said Old John, “I’ll
show you something.” So he got a stout stick
and began to tap the tree. Tap, tap, tap, tap,
as if he were beating time to music. This tapping
had a strange effect upon A-bal-ka. At first
he was greatly excited and tried to run farther up
the tree. Soon he gave this up, turned around,
and began to come down head foremost. He would
lift his little feet and shake them as if something
hurt them. Lower and lower he came, until the
old Indian could easily have killed him with his club
or caught him with his hand. He did neither.
He just laughed and threw away his stick.

“There,” said he, “that’s
the way to make a chipmunk come down out of a tree.
They’ll always do it, if you tap long enough,”

“I don’t know,” said Old John, “perhaps
they think you are trying to cut down the tree, or
maybe the jar hurts their feet. The Red Men used
to think that there was some kind of a magic charm
about it.”

“I am glad you didn’t hurt him,”
said the little boy, as they went on up the trail.

“Hurt him!” exclaimed the old Indian,
“why, don’t you know that no Indian ever
hurts a chipmunk?”